Writing in Euractiv recently, the CEO of the World Brewing Alliance, Justin Kissinger, made some remarkable claims that deserve some scrutiny. He began his piece with a reflection on the failure of the US experiment with alcohol prohibition, and a warning about the continuing influence of the temperance movement over global and national policy approaches to alcohol.
Ulrich Adam is the Director General of spiritsEUROPE.
So far so sensible, but where Mr Kissinger begins to go off-piste is when he argues that the best approach is in fact to demonise one type of drink and to loosen controls on another.
Kissinger cites the example of Denmark, which placed a heavy tax on spirits during World War 1. This distorted the market and resulted in huge windfall profits for Danish brewers, who have in the decades since grown into global powerhouses with huge domestic influence.
So entrenched are the major brewers in Danish public life that Christmas season begins each year on “J-Dag”, a day when special Christmas beers are launched and dispensed with festive cheer all around the country.
This might not sound like such a problem, but when we realise that on J-Dag vast amounts of beer is served free of charge to minors, we get some idea of how the European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs (ESPAD) consistently shows Denmark at the top of the rankings for teen alcohol consumption. Other research shows that Denmark has the highest rates of heavy episodic (binge) drinking in the OECD, and by far the highest rates of teenage binge drinking across Europe.
Yet Kissinger decided to lavish Denmark’s alcohol policies with praise, just after its powerful brewing lobby – led by a former Justice and Health Minister who was recruited directly from Cabinet to lead their campaign – had successfully campaigned to preserve their ability to sell their products to 16 and 17 year olds.
Spirits distillers and brewers may not see eye to eye on all topics, but we would hope that in 2024 we can all agree that campaigning to preserve the right to sell alcohol to minors is objectionable, and attempting to justify this by drawing unfounded distinctions between different forms of alcohol products is ill-advised.
As all beer drinkers already know, the alcohol in beer doesn’t get you less drunk than other kinds of alcohol. The risk of harm from drinking alcohol depends on how much you drink and your overall patterns of consumption, not the format you drink it in – and that fact is reflected in responsible drinking guidance around the world.
Risky drinking behaviour tends to reflect local drinking habits. In other words, risky drinkers tend to drink most of their alcohol from the category of drink that is dominant in the country they live in, as is clearly the case for beer in the case of Denmark, and certainly with regard to youth consumption.
The WBA recently revamped its website to include a ‘Reducing Harm’ section that is 100% focused on encouraging policy discrimination in favour of beer. Beyond one line saying “our members promote responsible drinking around the world” it has nothing to say about encouraging responsible consumption and tackling the harmful use of alcohol more broadly.
We call on the WBA to step up and take a consistent stand against alcohol consumption by under-18s, and to refrain from positioning their products as somehow more healthy than distilled alternatives.
As Denmark prepares to formalise a longstanding discrimination in favour of its brewers that does nothing to curb dangerous youth drinking habits, we ask policymakers elsewhere in Europe to make take note: let’s not muddy the waters on alcohol consumption and health by drawing artificial distinctions that favour one set of interests over another, but rather focus on robust evidence and clear policy signals that recognise that there is no drink of moderation, but only the practice of moderation.